Unless you’re a software developer, it’s likely that you have a love hate relationship with software. It tends to be something you can’t do without, but also it can make your life harder when it doesn’t quite do what you want it to.
If you are thinking about upgrading from an existing system or maybe you’re considering evolving from a cumbersome manual process, here are 7 reasons why you may want to consider a custom solution over an off the shelf product.
1. Workarounds = headaches
With many off the shelf products, even ones that claim to be “customisable”, more often than not they just don’t do everything you need them to. As a result workarounds are created, usually manual processes that drain staff time and patience. They lead to increased risk of error and a productivity dive that can sometimes outweigh the benefits.
2. Team trade offs
As organisations grow and get more complex, it becomes harder to find software that suits everyone’s needs. When choosing a product, you may find that one department will be winning with increased productivity, whilst another may be pulling their hair out at the extra workload. The result is a net loss rather than return on your precious investment. A custom solution can take the needs of all departments into consideration and come up with a solution tailored to suit them all.
3. Hack off the hackers
Digital security is an ever increasing concern, and your data is an asset that needs to be protected. It takes effort to breach a system and steal data, so would be hackers would see little gain in attacking a custom system in one organisation, when they could reap the rewards from concentrating their efforts on an off the shelf product and infiltrate hundreds of thousands of organisations instead.
4. Peace of mind that you can stick with it
With many mainstream products, you’ll find that eventually the developer may stop supporting it. They are onto the next new thing, leaving you with an expensive investment that gets harder and more expensive to maintain as time goes on. And what’s worse, it can prematurely force you into launching into a brand new search for something new, a costly exercise than many businesses don’t want to do more than then need to.
5. The smart choice in the long run
On face value, a custom solution may seem more expensive up front, but the payoff comes in many ways. With the right provider, once it’s scoped and delivered, there’s no messy back and forth requesting of improvements and adjustments to get what you thought you paid for. You don’t pay for useless features you don’t need, there’s no system oddities that you have to explain endlessly when staff are confused, implementation is simple as staff pick it up and run with it because it makes sense and fits in with the way your organisation works. The upfront investment may save a business money in the long term with the increased productivity and reduced administration time.
6. Future ready
Since you are getting something brand new and tailored to your business, you can be confident the platform can scale and grow as you do. You won’t find yourself a few years down the track having to re-do the whole search, design, build and implementation just because your business needs have changed slightly. With the right provider, you’ll have a partner that can easily recommend and implement what you need as you go. It’s flexible, and adaptable.
7. Insider support
With a custom solution, also comes a team that not only understands the system, but the way you want to use it. It’s like having someone in your organisation with the technical knowledge to keep things working the way you want things to.
Contact Cadence Today!
If any of these reasons have sparked your interest or made you think of a problem that custom software could solve at your business, contact Cadence today! Our team creates custom cloud based solutions designed specifically to suit your needs.